The Turn: Integrated File Sharing

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige” – Opening Naration, The Prestige (Movie)

The Pledge

Back in 2008, we saw a market gap w.r.t to protection of endpoint data within enterprises. The market had a choice between heavy weight server backup and consumer grade online backup, but not happy with either of them. Druva addressed the opportunity and launched inSync designed from ground up for endpoints and built for enterprises.

Initially we focussed on the core differentiation around global deduplication, WAN optimized backups and simplicity. And eventually, over the next 4 years, we added all the incremental features to take the product mainstream.

Over the last two years, the enterprise has seen the battlefield shift from servers to endpoints.

For the enduser, mobile access, sync across devices and file sharing have gained importance over just backup. Although IT is equally concerned over enduser enablement, the drag-and-drop file sharing still doesn’t replace protection offered by the good old automated backup.

When surveyed by Druva about the key concerns w.r.t endpoints, IT came back with following (survey results and detailed study to be available soon) :

Enduser data protection & long-term data retention

Enabling enterprise mobility and collaboration

Visibility and control over data across devices

To make the service more valuable for IT, we took a bold step to focus deeper on the enduser data and not just backup. Over the last 18 months, each release of inSync has focussed to cover broader set of functionality and realizing a grand vision to become the unified cloud for endpoints within enterprises:

We are aware that the “file-sharing” space is getting crowded. Every single day there is a new player claiming to be “dropbox for enterprise”. And this is no different than the “online backup” wave about 3 years back.

inSync is NOT trying to be another *box, but an integrated platform which would help IT consolidate solutions connecting the endpoints and managing data effectively.

The Prestige

This is what Steve Jobs used to cover in his famous “One more thing” slide.

The new platform approach adopted by inSync has limitless possibilities, with each release we can see the customers getting more and more excited. We have also had very different feature requests which would enhance IT visibility/control and user enablement though better collaboration. IMO, the value of inSync and growth of Druva depends on what features we refuse, which would help clear differentiation and defined value proposition.

Over the next 12 months, I am super confident Druva would put across a Prestige moment, keeping it’s focus intact on endpoints and the enterprise.